4 ms·

Why would reducing biodiversity cause humans to go extinct? It isn't made clear in the article. Wouldn't it just cause certain creatures to be more dominant?

dyeje 8y ago
The environment is a complex web of interdependent relationships between species and ecological processes. You remove enough relationships and it'll just collapse.
- Illniyar 8y ago
  That's very vague. Collapse how? According to other comments we have already remove 60% of species, why wasn't that enough to cause a collapse. Other species take up the slack left by those removed.
  - peepopeep 8y ago
    I am not an expert on anything but I can give the answer a stab. Let us make many assumptions: Say plankton dies off, say animals eating plankton die, say humans eating those animals now have less food. Say all the fish die and we are reduced to land-based food. Now we have more space competing for farm land, we have to clear forest. Clearing adds to CO2 emissions, construction, more emissions, less CO2 being taken out. It's clear how this is all one giant feedback loop. Less biodiversity, more overabundance of something else, which leads to less consumption of something else which leads to collapse of ecosystems which leads to use trying to patch things up and doing even more harm. Just zoom out and think about things that consume things and how that loops back directly to humans, environment, overproduction, overuse and eventually unsustainable usage of resources until there are none left.
    - glenneroo 8y ago
      Also phytoplankton are responsible for 50-85% of the oxygen we breathe, so if they die off it won't just be a food-chain issue.
  - intended 8y ago
    Death of insects means no honey and many dead birds. No pollination means many fallow meadows and dead plants. This means either weeds spreading or top soil depletion. This also means many crops we depend on will not survive because various helper species aren’t available. Earthworms dying mean no areation of soil, or the impact of other insects to improve the eco system. So no those other species aren’t taking up the slack as you put it. Wasps aren’t interchangeable with moths for example. But I too want to understand better how far this collapse impacts human beings.
    - nearbuy 8y ago
      This doesn't really explain human extinction. Our food supply doesn't come from a natural ecosystem. - Commercial bee populations aren't declining. (There has been an increase in Colony Collapse Disorder, but lost colonies are replaced and total bee population hasn't declined.) - The vast majority of the world's food supply does not depend on pollination from insects. To quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated...: > The most essential staple food crops on the planet, like corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they are wind-pollinated or self-pollinating. Other staple food crops, like bananas and plantains, are sterile and propagated from cuttings, requiring no pollination of any form, ever. - None of the crops that require pollination from insects are essential to human survival. It's hard to see how their loss could lead to our extinction. - Crops can be pollinated by hand or machine. - Crops can be propagated without seeds. - Crops can be grown in all kinds of unbelievable conditions. Crops can be grown without soil. They can be grown in space stations, completely isolated from Earth's ecosystems. - Extinction is a very strong claim. To support it, it wouldn't be enough, for example, to show that 90% of the population would die off, leaving 750 million people. They need to propose a mechanism by which all humans would die.
      - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
        Extinction will come from Climate change. And the surge of climate change refugees and subsequent migrations will impact food supply and density.
  - twright 8y ago
    My go to example is if we lose insects which pollinate plants we would have a very very hard time growing certain foods. There is a certain unforeseeable complexity to these things. Just a speculatory example, losing migratory birds could weaken the soil microbiome and seed biodiversity in the places they migrate to, from, and over. There could be a crop-critical organism in their path that relies on the regular influx of new bacteria or seeds from a certain place. On what we have already removed: a building likely still stands if you remove 60% of the contents of the building, the last 40% is what is really holding it up.
  - dyeje 8y ago
    There are some good examples in the Wikipedia article on ecological collapse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_collapse Let's look at it from a different perspective though. If thousands of scientists are wrong and we improve the environment but there was never any danger of human extinction then we still end up with a more enjoyable planet. If thousands of scientists are right and we don't improve the environment then we all die. Seems like a pretty easy decision to me.
  - tejtm 8y ago
    In addition to collapse, climate change, etc which would be relatively predictable, there would also likely be a potent feed back mechanism in the form of global war bringing the extinction tipping point closer much more quickly than we are prepared to cope with.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      Don’t forget Ebola, the loss of fertility because of smartphone radiations and an inpending martian invasion...
api 8y ago
Extinct is click bait, but it could definitely harm us. It also makes the world less interesting.
- Illniyar 8y ago
  How would it harm us? It's never made clear.
  - api 8y ago
    Collapse of food chains and loss of natural beauty are the two most obvious ways.
  - StanislavPetrov 8y ago
    The food we eat and the air we breath all depend on living things - on the ecosystem that we evolved to live in.
omosubi 8y ago
Here's an example of re-introducing a single species to an ecosystem https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-restoration.htm https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-restoration.htm No imagine halving the number of species in yellowstone

dyeje 8y ago

The environment is a complex web of interdependent relationships between species and ecological processes. You remove enough relationships and it'll just collapse.

Illniyar 8y ago
That's very vague. Collapse how? According to other comments we have already remove 60% of species, why wasn't that enough to cause a collapse. Other species take up the slack left by those removed.
- peepopeep 8y ago
  I am not an expert on anything but I can give the answer a stab. Let us make many assumptions: Say plankton dies off, say animals eating plankton die, say humans eating those animals now have less food. Say all the fish die and we are reduced to land-based food. Now we have more space competing for farm land, we have to clear forest. Clearing adds to CO2 emissions, construction, more emissions, less CO2 being taken out. It's clear how this is all one giant feedback loop. Less biodiversity, more overabundance of something else, which leads to less consumption of something else which leads to collapse of ecosystems which leads to use trying to patch things up and doing even more harm. Just zoom out and think about things that consume things and how that loops back directly to humans, environment, overproduction, overuse and eventually unsustainable usage of resources until there are none left.
  - glenneroo 8y ago
    Also phytoplankton are responsible for 50-85% of the oxygen we breathe, so if they die off it won't just be a food-chain issue.
- intended 8y ago
  Death of insects means no honey and many dead birds. No pollination means many fallow meadows and dead plants. This means either weeds spreading or top soil depletion. This also means many crops we depend on will not survive because various helper species aren’t available. Earthworms dying mean no areation of soil, or the impact of other insects to improve the eco system. So no those other species aren’t taking up the slack as you put it. Wasps aren’t interchangeable with moths for example. But I too want to understand better how far this collapse impacts human beings.
  - nearbuy 8y ago
    This doesn't really explain human extinction. Our food supply doesn't come from a natural ecosystem. - Commercial bee populations aren't declining. (There has been an increase in Colony Collapse Disorder, but lost colonies are replaced and total bee population hasn't declined.) - The vast majority of the world's food supply does not depend on pollination from insects. To quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated...: > The most essential staple food crops on the planet, like corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they are wind-pollinated or self-pollinating. Other staple food crops, like bananas and plantains, are sterile and propagated from cuttings, requiring no pollination of any form, ever. - None of the crops that require pollination from insects are essential to human survival. It's hard to see how their loss could lead to our extinction. - Crops can be pollinated by hand or machine. - Crops can be propagated without seeds. - Crops can be grown in all kinds of unbelievable conditions. Crops can be grown without soil. They can be grown in space stations, completely isolated from Earth's ecosystems. - Extinction is a very strong claim. To support it, it wouldn't be enough, for example, to show that 90% of the population would die off, leaving 750 million people. They need to propose a mechanism by which all humans would die.
    - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
      Extinction will come from Climate change. And the surge of climate change refugees and subsequent migrations will impact food supply and density.
- twright 8y ago
  My go to example is if we lose insects which pollinate plants we would have a very very hard time growing certain foods. There is a certain unforeseeable complexity to these things. Just a speculatory example, losing migratory birds could weaken the soil microbiome and seed biodiversity in the places they migrate to, from, and over. There could be a crop-critical organism in their path that relies on the regular influx of new bacteria or seeds from a certain place. On what we have already removed: a building likely still stands if you remove 60% of the contents of the building, the last 40% is what is really holding it up.
- dyeje 8y ago
  There are some good examples in the Wikipedia article on ecological collapse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_collapse Let's look at it from a different perspective though. If thousands of scientists are wrong and we improve the environment but there was never any danger of human extinction then we still end up with a more enjoyable planet. If thousands of scientists are right and we don't improve the environment then we all die. Seems like a pretty easy decision to me.
- tejtm 8y ago
  In addition to collapse, climate change, etc which would be relatively predictable, there would also likely be a potent feed back mechanism in the form of global war bringing the extinction tipping point closer much more quickly than we are prepared to cope with.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    Don’t forget Ebola, the loss of fertility because of smartphone radiations and an inpending martian invasion...

api 8y ago

Extinct is click bait, but it could definitely harm us. It also makes the world less interesting.

Illniyar 8y ago
How would it harm us? It's never made clear.
- api 8y ago
  Collapse of food chains and loss of natural beauty are the two most obvious ways.
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  The food we eat and the air we breath all depend on living things - on the ecosystem that we evolved to live in.

omosubi 8y ago

Here's an example of re-introducing a single species to an ecosystem https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-restoration.htm https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-restoration.htm No imagine halving the number of species in yellowstone